Would I be missed if I were to die? While we are alive, some feel the need to be put on a pedestal. Why? Your standing will not matter when you are dead and in a pine box. How long will your ‘status’ actually be remembered? A week or maybe two, a month or possibly even a year, and then few will visit your grave, just a place where your body is, but not your spirit.

Your spirit lives. In and out with every breath we take, we share it the people who have gone before us; their spirit is the energy that follows us, that drives us forward. Every ounce of air has been breathed in and out by thousands and thousands of other spirits before us, so each time we breathe, what we are enveloping is the spirit of others. Close your eyes and imagine the face of someone you don’t know. Could it be the spirit of one of the people who lived before you? Breathe in the spirit of the animals, and the trees: they breathe the same air. We are all connected by something we cannot see, invisible yet vitally important to our collective life on this earth. We are indebted to the air, for if it is fouled and when it is gone, all spirits will go with it.

Breath becomes air which becomes breath again… the cycle of life.

Stephen Douris ©